As Rift continues to evolve more quickly that World of Warcraft could ever hope to, Trion has not been shy about borrowing from the number one subscription MMO in the west.
In their role as understudy to the master, they have borrowed some of WoW’s successes, like achievements in all sizes for all players, battlegrounds, and cash shop cosmetic mounts. Oh and the five player instanced dungeon game on which our Saturday night group loves to focus. That is what brought us to Telara after Cataclysm quickly grew stale.
But they also play the nimble opponent, reaching out to all sources for ways in which to differentiate themselves from the Azerothian behemoth in an attempt to become all the best things in the DIKU MMO world.
So they have instant adventures, mentoring, a mix-and-match talent tree system like no other (with pre-set crutches for those of us who don’t like that sort of thing), zone events, easy appearance slots (which they kinda need), maybe the best fishing game in any MMO, area looting, and of course the open group/public quest events from which the game draws its name, those rifts.
And so it should be no surprise that Trion has again decided to run with another successful Blizzard idea and offer up a free copy of the first Rift expansion, Storm Legion if you opt to subscribe to the game for year.
Commit for Free Stuff
You get the Storm Legion expansion, a mount, and a special title if you sign up for a one year subscription to the game. Details on the expansion and such are on Rift’s Storm Legion page, which is where I stole that graphic. You can “Buy Now” from there.
The Package Price
During beta I dismissed Rift as yet another WoW inspired fantasy MMORPG without much to differentiate it. I had enough fantasy MMORPG on my plate, I did not need any more. My enthusiasm for the game came long after launch when so many people were making moon eyes at the game. As time has gone on, Trion has worked very hard, and quite successfully, to break free of my initial impression. It became the game on my 2011 MMO Outlook that I ended up playing.
Now if they would just do something about the Guardian starter area. I found that to be the most tedious aspect of the game, which isn’t a good way to bring people into the game.
The Ancient Gaming Noob 
Don’t hold your breath. I complained about that way back in Alpha. (-: One the other hand, Scott Hartsman is great about reading and taking feedback from blogs, so…
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@HZ – I blame the Guardian starter zone for about 50% of my initial non-enthusiasm about the game.
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Thanks for sharing your opinion!
My experience with RIFT is quite the same. After a post-launch month of playing, I forgot about the game for a year, until the “fishing update” was implemented. For some reason (which I have yet to research), an MMO without fishing or its equivalent, like catching butterflies, as in Achaea MUD, etc. seems incomplete for me.
After I came back, I have to conclude that RIFT developers are doing really good job and are quite responsive to the feedback. The quantity and quality of the updates is impressive in comparison to many other MMORPGs.
Also, recently I tried Everquest 2 and may say that probably RIFT takes a lot of good things from this game as well, but it is less common fact as EQ2 is less popular than WoW.
The latest offer of Storm Legion looks like just another thing borrowed and improved – I suspect that offering a major expansion for the subscription to the same game may be better in terms of players’ reaction than offering another albeit highly anticipated game.
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Funcom ran this promotion with AoC before Blizzard did with WoW.
Who is copying who?
Weren’t achievements introduced in Lotro and War far before they were in WoW?
Give credit where credit isn’t due.
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I really don’t have time to play Rift and I’m not likely to find time in the next year, but even I’m considering taking that offer.
And I quite like Silverwood.
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I like Rift but other games got in the way of me playing it long term ( I was subbed for 9 months or so after launch). The offer is slightly badly timed because of GW2. If it is still available after that first 1 or 2 months of GW2 then maybe the shine will have worn off that game enough for me to consider grabbing it…
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@Gnova – Your comment confuses me.
Here is what I said: Rift copied WoW’s achievement system.
Here is what I did NOT say: WoW invented achievements.
Seriously, go examine the achievement systems in WoW, LOTRO, and WAR and tell me which Rift copied almost exactly. It sure wasn’t the ones from WAR or LOTRO.
Likewise, who just had a sale where if you subscribed for a year you would get a new piece of software with an as-yet unannounced date along with an in-game mount? Blizzard just had a wonderfully successful sale like that that roped in a million players, something like 20% of their western subscribers.
Did Funcom have a similar promotion to give away TSW it you subscribed to AOC for a year that I missed? Was it even modestly successful?
And even if they did, who do you suppose influenced Trion more?
So please, do give credit where credit is due, because you certainly don’t seem to be inclined to.
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This IMO is a bit different than boosting WoW sub numbers by using D3. Here, you are using the current game (Rift) to give people who know (or believe) they like the game enough to stick around for a year the expansion for ‘free’.
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@SynCaine – I will grant you that it is a bit different in that regard, yet it seems more akin to the Blizzard offer than any other one I can recall. Especially since it included the free mount which you get right away when you sign up.
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What Vlad said about EQ2 rings true. Though little surprise given Hartsman’s involvement.
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@Shadow – Yes, things like mentoring and cosmetic slots show more of an EQ2 influence… the exception being that Trion got things right the first time. But I did say that the game was reaching out to other sources in my post. The WoW items are just more obvious.
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I really like Rift. I have been there for the last 2 years now after sadly leaving WoW due to security issues and other things. In one of dev diary from Trion, one guy says:”we are a service”. That is what I like about Rift. Of course it is a carbon copy of WoW but to me it seems that Trion has listened to WoW players and offered them what they wanted in a world they were (are) familiar with. Rift is WoW with a customer satisfaction service. I like that. If Blizzard had done some serious work about their customer care Rift may not have ever existed. but this is just my personal opinion.
For the short story, a few months ago, i fancied playing WoW again so i got in touch with Blizzard about my old account telling them that i can not log in due to the loss of password and removal of authenticator from my device and so on. They replied to me with something along the line:”Please log in to your account and submit a ticket about this issue.”
-???, It looks like not much has changed at Blizzard, i’ll save my money for my next yearly sub to Rift. Shame because I really enjoyed playing WoW.
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@Nyu – The funny thing about what you wrote, about Trion listening to WoW players and giving them what they were looking for, is almost exactly how WoW eclipsed EverQuest back in the day.
It hasn’t worked out as dramatically for Trion, but it has worked to some extent.
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